October 29 Update

Today was successful in sponsorship and season review.

Season Review

We looked at our robot shooter design last year. (Belt shooter with 1:1 CIM gearing) We concluded that our design, although making shots, was inefficient. We discussed how we should have use an AndyMark 9015 motor to achieve higher speeds at less voltage and stall current. We also discuss rpm calculations opposed to percentage of available voltage. Very eye-opening session for the students.

Sponsorship

On October 28, I emailed an informational packet to the plant manager at the local Boise Cascade EWP Plant. I received a phone call back today and they are going to donate $500 to our team. Every little bit counts and we're making it there. 

Will blog again soon

Update - October 28

Today was a day of up and downs for our team.

The downs first:

• AFCO Industries, our primary sponsor, who provides build space, materials, and mentorship notified us that they will only be able to provide materials this upcoming year.

The positives:

• We have a lead for Hayes Manufacturing to provide machining for our team.
• Union Tank Car Manufacturing (UTLX) is going to sponsor our team. The details are to be worked out.
• One of our team members parents run a t-shirt company. This year we will have two t-shirt designs.

Will blog again soon.

Today we sent out five more sponsorship requests.

• Central Electric Company of Alexandria - Local Solar Energy Company
• CLECO - Central Louisiana Electric Company
• Invertis Solar Systems - Local Solar Energy Company
• Pan American Engineers - Local Engineering Firm who sponsored us last year
• T&D Solutions Ltd. - Company in Louisiana and East Texas focused on high voltage engineering

Hopefully we can get some response from these letters. We'd like to get these logos on our robot haha. 

Will blog again soon. 

Can't wait for the upcoming 2014 build season. We have signed up for the 2014 Arkansas Regional (March 6-8). We're looking to compete against some really good teams.

We added four sponsors this past week:

• Murphy Oil Corporation is matching $1000 of donation
• Sutherland Global Services made a contribution of $1000
• Baker Manufacturing has offered to do sheet metal fabrication for our team
• Crest Industries, Inc. made a contribution of $250

However we were denied by GE Energy. They stated that contributions were made on the corporate level rather than local level. Well get'em next time.

Now you can enjoy some our of new logos.